Tonga missing big guns for World Cup playoff

There is no doubt that Rassie is working his magic and I’d say you’re bang on the money that you’ve identified a coherent plan centred on delivering Bok success in ‘27. That said, I suspect the details around Jones and Walters England departures weren’t planned in quite the way they unfolded. Still much water to flow under the bridge but you wouldn’t bet against Rassie and the Boks with confidence, even at this early stage!

Listening to you, ireland and their fans are sainted angels who can do no wrong. I don’t think so. And neither does anyone else on here, apart from a couple of other one eyed Irish fans ofc.

Acceptance is the first step, and always the toughest. Enjoy the ride!

But it is a ‘boardroom’ metric rather than a fan centric concept like BIP!

And FYI ‘clock ticking when there’s no action’ is not included in BIP time

Are you saying a team is not counted as being in ‘possession’ of the ball unless say, lets come up with another random concept to clarify their term, there is also a risk of that ‘possession’ being turned over?

The difference here obviously a team has possession of the ball when they have advantage and play needs to be stopped, but theres obviously no ‘risk’ to that possession being lost until, you know, play starts again!

But seriously when it comes to the differentiation being made, and what I’d been saying for years now, I actually think that yes, both games would be classified as high temp. 6N and SR alike. That these two on the show don’t want to admit that isn’t a reason to say neither is high tempo just because one isn’t faster than the other.

You forgot Bulls v Glasgow? I have a certain ‘fog’ around missing RWC years as well..

I like your solutions, especially considering that if body type can revert back to what it was even a decade ago, it’s going to remove a lot of the ‘safety’ problems from some of those key positional areas.

Something that I would really like to see test, theoretically or otherwise, is the impact of speeding up the game by making interchanges unlimiited. If the current trend of not allowing medical evalutations to take place live on the field can continue, then this solution would be unnecessary of course.

I can imagine that. SA are very used to the travel, and perhaps I didn’t place enough importance to how bad the NH sides were at it.

There are plenty of times you said something to someone and no response. They're having a bad day, they didn't hear you, they didn't know who you were, they genuinely weren't paying attention. I mean, seriously, did he think to ask after the game???